Instead of operating on their
own account they are reduced to mere servants of attaining
pleasure and avoiding pain.
This is equivalent to saying that there is no extensive number of
common interests; there is no free play back and forth among the
members of the social group. Stimulation and response are
exceedingly one-sided. In order to have a large number of values
in common, all the members of the group must have an equable
opportunity to receive and to take from others. There must be a
large variety of shared undertakings and experiences. Otherwise,
the influences which educate some into masters, educate others
into slaves. And the experience of each party loses in meaning,
when the free interchange of varying modes of life-experience is
arrested. A separation into a privileged and a subject-class
prevents social endosmosis. The evils thereby affecting the
superior class are less material and less perceptible, but
equally real. Their culture tends to be sterile, to be turned
back to feed on itself; their art becomes a showy display and
artificial; their wealth luxurious; their knowledge
overspecialized; their manners fastidious rather than humane.
Lack of the free and equitable intercourse which springs from a
variety of shared interests makes intellectual stimulation
unbalanced. Diversity of stimulation means novelty, and novelty
means challenge to thought. The more activity is restricted to a
few definite lines -- as it is when there are rigid class lines
preventing adequate interplay of experiences -- the more action
tends to become routine on the part of the class at a
disadvantage, and capricious, aimless, and explosive on the part
of the class having the materially fortunate position.
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